The Outcast Blade Read Free Page B

and did their best to ignore Lady Giulietta’s presence on their island.
    Sitting in her room, Giulietta twisted the ring Leopold had put on her finger until her finger was raw enough to hurt. She’d like to be able to ignore herself too. And how could she disagree with the Crucifers’ opinion?
    She wasn’t sure which disgusted her more.
    What she’d let Tycho do on the deck of the
San Marco
. Or that she’d sought him out so soon after Leopold’s death. She loved her husband. Leopold was a good man.
    Had been a good man
.
    When she was at her most desolate, scared of being recaptured and already pregnant, Leopold zum Friedland found her on thequayside after she’d been turned away from the patriarch’s palace. He reduced her to tears with kindness.
    Something she didn’t expect from men.
    It was a strange love; but no one had a fiercer friend, and he married her for all he never tried to take her to his bed. He stood father to her child. He died so she could live. Tears backed up in Giulietta’s eyes.
    Leopold made her feel safe
    And Tycho…?
    She swallowed hard.
    If she felt guilty it was Tycho’s fault.
    On the deck of the
San Marco
he’d taken advantage of her sadness, and then told her terrible lies. He’d used what happened eighteen months before, when they first met in the cathedral, when he took the blade from her hands… He should have let her kill herself; before she met Leopold, before she had Leo, before she met him.
    She hated him for it.
    Lady Giulietta repeated that to herself.
    He was nothing. Merely an ex-slave for all he had the face of an angel and a fear of God’s light more suited to a creature from hell. Her nurse had warned her about men like him.
    Staring across the lagoon to Venice beyond, Giulietta came to a decision and made herself a promise. It didn’t matter that he made her feel… Lady Giulietta refused to put how Tycho made her feel into words. She would ignore him from now on. And she would behave like the Millioni princess she was.
    Leopold’s widow.
    She had responsibilities, a child and a reputation to protect. How dare he assume there was room in her life for him?
    Princes ruled countries according to the rule of God. So Lady Giulietta had been taught. Within these countries their wordwas the law, quite literally. But there were several Orders of Knighthood where the Grand Prior’s word was law within the Order, wherever the knights might be. She should have realised the Prior would want a chance to impress the princess he’d taken in so unwillingly.
    “Must I…?”
    Lord Atilo smiled. “My lady. It would be rude not to.”
    “God forbid…”
    Trestle tables were laid in the monastery hall.
    The Prior sat himself in the middle of the top table with her to his right, her baby in a basket at her feet. Atilo sat to the Prior’s left. Next to Atilo sat Desdaio, with Tycho on her far side.
    The Under Prior took Atilo’s place on Giulietta’s side of the table, meaning Lord Roderigo had the seat beyond. In placing his deputy above the captain of the Venetian customs, the Prior was stressing his Order’s independence.
    But for all the Prior’s manners were questionable his feast was magnificent. Barolo wine darker than velvet. Whites from Germany made sweet by letting their grapes rot on the vine. The Order brewed its own ale and provided barrels of it. The food was equally impressive. Fresh bread from the kitchens, pickles and salted vegetables from the gardens, dried mutton soaked until it was salt free, and skimmed until the fat was gone. Carp from the pond, fried anchovies from the lagoon and grilled eel with fennel.
    Everyone ate on huge rounds of stale bread.
    Those at the high table left theirs to be cleared away. Those on the lower tables ate their rounds softened with the juices from the meat. After the pies came puddings, mounds of sweetmeats and candied fruit, fresh dates and plums. Wine and ale flowed so freely a glass only had to be a little empty to be